Stones are made up of minerals and minerals are made up of atoms. In fact, everything is made up of atoms and we may as well refer to them as the universes’ building blocks. Think Lego. The most brilliant thing about atoms is that they come from the stars. Atoms are created when stars form, burn and explode. Over billions of years these building blocks have been drifting through space and slowly accumulated to create solid objects such as our planet. Approximately 3.2 billion years ago, the first basement rocks formed on Earth and created a continent. A relatively small part of this continent filled up with water from melting glaciers and created an inland lake. At the shallow inlets of this lake, about 300 million years ago, formed large vegetated swamps that fed dinosaurs such as Massospondylus and Euskelosaurus. Shortly after this, geologically speaking, the climate dried and sandy deposits covered these marshlands. Turn the clock forward a few more million years and subsequent geological events covered what used to be the inland lake. About 182 million years ago Gondwanaland started splitting up into something that closely resembles the continent we know today. The fracturing and tilting of the continental edge, followed by the alluvial erosion of the Luvuvhu River in Makuya Nature Reserve, now exposes the metamorphic sediments of that ancient inland lake. This mystical landscape is dotted with thousands of Baobab trees and is one of the last strongholds of modern megafauna on Earth. In the meantime a conscious ape had evolved too and had inhabited this exact landscape for thousands of years. Against this atomic backdrop, and oblivious to it all, a trailist picked up a pretty stone one day. A stone forged during the time of dinosaurs. Remarkably she decided that this rock is precious. Precious enough to stop for and to admire, be it only for a brief period of history.
Right, back to the stone’s building blocks. For you to be reading this letter right now trillions of drifting atoms had somehow to assemble in an intricate and curiously obliging manner to create you. The same way it created the stone. However, the trailist’s atomic arrangement is so specialised and particular that it has never been tried before and will exist only once. So, for the stone and the trailist to have been atomically arranged the way they have, and connecting in the way they did was nothing short of miraculous.
Yet, atoms are fickle and their time of devotion to humans especially is fleeting. At any given point, for reasons unknown, your atoms will close you down then silently disassemble and go off to be other things. Just like the stone, your life journey too will go through facets of burning and exploding stars, continental drift, melting glaciers, organic growth, dinosaurs, heat, pressure and evolution. May the stones along your path provide you with perspective.
